Men as parents.

He's a parent. He is single.

So you're saying that someone who looks after the kids 24/7, has to make all the decisions regarding education, health, etc, and who takes them to all social events is no different from someone who takes them to the zoo at weekends and buys them a Mcdonalds.

It is perfectly possible for a child to have two parents; both of which take responsibility for raising her and caring for her. Co-parenting after a divorce is an important skill, it takes effort and is not always easy. Millions of parents do just that.

Obviously "buying them a McDonald's" is not parenting. Hopefully that is not a gender stereotype. That is certainly not what we are talking about.

Max recently started a thread about his daughter, and how he spoke to her mother about something. He can do that, but I can't because I'm a single parent. He's not, there are two of them to decide things concerning his daughter's welfare.

I don't really understand what you are arguing. The term "single mother" is commonly used to refer to a divorced woman with kids regardless of the role the father is playing. The term "single father" is viewed a little differently because of gender stereotypes. This hopefully is changing. Mothers and fathers should be considered in the same way.

Our disagreement seems to be about the term "single parent" which to me means a parent who isn't married. This term can include both divorced parents, and widowed parents.

I accept that losing a spouse is difficult and that raising children without the benefit of an ex-spouse has challenges I haven't faced. There are also challenges to co-parenting... the thread you alluded to explains that the mother of my daughter is refusing to accept her as a gay teen. I don't always appreciate the input of my ex-spouse, and she doesn't always appreciate mine.

Many of the challenges we have faced are surely similar. I suspect that you may share my experience of learning to thread a sewing machine, cooking with your children, and having that odd experience of being the only man waiting to pick up your daughter from a birthday party.

Then you must be thick as ****. You're the one who keeps banging on about gender not me.

Being a single parent is hard work, not just in all the responsibility, but what you have to give up. You've not had to give up anything. You demean and dismiss everything I've had to do and give up by saying it means nothing, and that anyone can be a single parent, even if they only see their kid once a month.

You deliberately started this thread to insult me and bring back memories of my dead wife and all the **** I had to deal with then that you've never had to deal with.

You could never bring up a kid on your own because it means putting them first, all this poor Max **** would have to end, and that's something you just can't do.

Hi, I'm The Kid - Izzy's Kid specifically.

And yes, he raised my disabled brother and myself on his on since my brother was 4 and I had just turned 12.

Max has just created this thread because he hates women. He doesn't care about gender standards or anything. This is just an excuse for him to shite all over women because he's a raving misogynist that hates women.

Dad's point stands. I never had anyone other than him. He had to deal with me during very difficult teenage years while I was coping with emotional trauma due to the very early death of my mother on his own to the point I still feel guilty about a lot of the crap I put him through.

Dad never had to "learn to cook" or whatever other crappy stereotypical examples you gave after Mum died because it's a necessary life skill anyway? You should know how to look after yourself? Seriously why did it take a divorce/break up for you to go "well I should learn how to feed my kids"?

You literally couldn't give a flying frickity frack about how men are seen as parents, otherwise you might care about MY dad. But no, you don't, you just want to crap all over struggling women, again, and are attention-seeking and whining.

This thread isn't 'Men as parents', it's 'Max as a parent' because you want people to line up and kiss your arse over the fact that you answered a phone call to your daughter.

All while crapping all over women.

The fact that under related threads on here we see you accusing rape victims of being false and even have a thread where you complain that women's toilets are dirtier than men. Like... you've literally made a thread complaining that women are poopy. You're at toddler levels of misogyny here.

I wouldn't be anywhere near the strong, intelligent, talented, successful person I am today if it wasn't for the support, AND CONTINUING SUPPORT, of my father, someone who has been a rock throughout my life. I'm 26 and still rely on him for a lot of emotional support and I'm incredibly lucky to have it.

If you were a single parent, you might actually sympathise with some of the struggles that single mothers (as in actual single mothers - mothers who do it all on their own as opposed to joint-parenting mothers who happen to be single). You don't. You hate women just for daring to be female.

tl;dr, shut up and stop making threads where you just spread hate about women then cry that people aren't worshipping you for the absolute minimum

Thank you. This whole thread is an attack on single parents, men and women by Max, because he's put out at not being in some imaginary club.

He has no concept what it's like to be a single parent so he belittles and demeans us just to make a cheap misogynist point.

Max responded in his usual poor Max way and said you wouldn't attack a single mum. I know you, you wouldn't attack a single mum, but you would attack someone who claims to be a single mum while relying on the child's father to bring the child up.

This is my response to his attack on you.

The kid supported his single father by attacking a self centred dilettante who knows nothing about the real struggles of being a single dad so he insults and belittles them.

It's got nothing to do with gender, that's all in your head it's about bringing up children on your own, something you've never had to do.

Btw, single mums have never belittled and demeaned me for being a single dad. It's bigots like you that do that.

Izzy, I respect what you did, raising kids alone. I am sure that you were a great father.

Don't bullshit me. If that was the case you wouldn't have started this thread to attack single fathers and me specifically.

You did it deliberately, knowing full well you'd stir up all those feelings about having to deal with young children on my own after their mother had just died from breast cancer.

So don't pretend now, be honest for once in your life.

"Were"?

He is a great father - if you read a single word of my post you would realise that.

But no, you just made this thread in an attempt to hate on women and bring up a painful memory for my dad in an attempt to hurt him and play innocent.

Disgusting.

I am a woman and I did not take this to spew hate about woman. I took it as a vent about how "single" dads (as in not married) - are looked at differently than "single" moms (as in not married). And in general they are - at least from what I have seen. I, personally, have seen dads in divorce more often (not always) get the short end of the stick and are looked at as typically the non-custodial parent even if they are a "better" parent.

There could be a mis-interpretation overseas of what is defined as a single parent. And to be honest I used to think the same thing if you are divorced there are still two of you to take care of a child so you are not single. But in the US single parent is used to mean any parent where you are married.

You're also someone who read your daughter's diary, completely disregarding her privacy. I would never/ have never do9ne0 anything like that because it's a really disgusting thing to do.

You criticise me and take Max's side because I've brought up kids all on my own without a woman's input and you can't handle that.

I am not going to get in a pissing war with you. I am not angry at you even though you are personally attacking me with your comments.

I am not and have not criticized you and will not even if you did so to me. I am not taking sides - I simply did not interpret what Max said to be mean spirited. I also understand that this is very personal and can understand why you would be sensitive to single vs non-single definition - all I simply did was to explain in the US whether it is correct or not a single parent is usually referred to a parent who is not married.

I never said anything about your parenting skills negative or positive and I will not - I do not know you personally and everyone needs to do what they feel is right about their children.

I am sorry that you feel it necessary to lash out at others simply because you disagree in a terminology. In reality I agree more with your definition of single parent as I noted - just for some reason in the US it is used more loosely to mean an unmarried woman.

I’d call Izzy the “sole parent.”

“Weekend parenting” is not parenting at all, IMO. Kids coming back to mother’s house dirty, with dirty clothes on, sleep deprived and homework not done were not parented. A friend puts up with that every other weekend.

What started out as another poor Max thread has actually uncovered the real bigotry genuine single fathers like myself face. It's not so bad now the kids are grown up, but at the beginning it was really hard.

Some people don't like seeing a teenage girl and a small boy with a big bloke. My youngest is autistic and his language was late coming. When we went on holiday to Mexico I was paranoid about him being grabbed by some bigoted woman who would then be believed instead of me. To that end I had to make sure he wore a shirt with both our pictures on when we flew out. On the way back we wore matching shirts.

I've had to deal with a lot of bigoted women like Linkat who seem to think that having a vagina automatically makes them a better parent. They're quite happy to watch an idiot like Max's hamfisted attempts at parenting but they feel threatened by me, who not only can cope but in many cases does a far better job at parenting than them. These women, like Linkat are vain, shallow and materialistic, and they're also, like Linkat, unfit parents.

Anyone who snoops on their own kids betrays a trust, and that is something that kids won't forget. As a parent you need your kids to trust you, and you don't get their trust by going behind their backs, invading their privacy, humiliating them and causing long term grievances that will still cause arguments twenty years from now.

It's not just "terminology".

You can happily go 'I'm a woman and I didn't see it like that' but being a woman doesn't automatically give you an insight when you have no idea of Max's disgusting, misogynist track record.

He hates women and craves attention. It's really creepy and makes my skin crawl and comes out in every thread he creates.

Also my dad never violated my trust as a teenager which is why we're so close now. My girlfriend - soon to be fiancée - will be moving in with both of us because she sees dad as a much better father figure than her own.

You've ruined any chance of that ever happening.

Not only do you really not have a valid opinion on what Max meant - given his woman-hating, toxically-masculine, self-centred, victim-blaming, sex-obsessed, no-means-yes ideological history - but you've proven that you're a terrible mother so forgive me if I consider your thoughts on this thread to be utterly irrelevant.

It's not a question of semantics or US vs UK English.

If that's what you're getting from this thread where Max is desperately trying to get praise for being a fairweather weekend Daddy and claiming to be on the same level as my father while criticising women for being in a worse situation than himself then really you need to step back and think about if your opinion is really necessary or if you're spouting vacuous nonsense in an attempt to validate the classic technique of hate disguised as a "simple question".

Sit down.

Semantics, last refuge of the bigot.

Hard to tell what your point is beyond a gratuitous insult.

It seems that you are suggesting that a single parent who is a man can't match up with one who is a woman because he didn't give birth to the child. You then state that women "almost always gain child custody unless judged unfit." This would certainly seem to acknowledge that some women who give birth to children can be unfit mothers, and if a single parent is a man the chances are that he is either a widower or the mother of the child was deemed unfit, so it's foolish to argue that a man can't be as equally as good a parent as a woman simply because he didn't birth the child.

I would agree that, in general, women tend to be better parents than men, but this has as much to do with their biological wiring as it does with their giving birth, and it, in no way, preclude men from being excellent parents.

That courts generally favor women in custody battles has a lot to do with traditional thinking about women which is something hardcore feminists tend to reject, unless, of course, it works in their favor.